Adam and Heather Hayes

Hi friends and family! Welcome to our blog! We realized how convenient it is to put pictures, videos, and pertinent information on the web so we can show and explain things (Our road trip this summer inspired it) without bringing laptops, cds, dvds, scrapbooks and etc. along with us everywhere.

For those of you who don't see us often, I will quickly bring you up to speed on who and where we are.

Adam is running his own business from our home, AH Digital FX Studios . He does web design and hosting. The wonderful thing about that is he can work from anywhere, even Ririe Idaho. He was in charge of his 10 year high school reunion last Saturday, it was a blast. (That also gives you a clue on how old he is!) He is the BYU Idaho 7th Stake Clerk, that takes up a lot of Sunday morning time but he loves it and he can make it back for 1:00 church with me so I really don't mind it either! He is enjoying swinging a bat this summer whether it's softball, baseball, wiffleball he's in the middle of it. Our business is doing well. In fact we are about to close in our 1 car garage and make it the office so there is an outdoor access and more room. In order to do that we needed a shed/shop to store all the stuff in the garage now, so we are looking at the foundation in the backyard and hoping it will be mostly done next week.

I (Heather) am in the middle of yard and garden work. Picking and canning green beans, finding new ways to convince my family to eat zucchini, watering my 1 acre yard by hose and sprinkler, keeping Baby Vi out of every cupboard, and primary presidency stuff. It's an exciting, but busy time of year. I LOVE harvest season. All the hard work in the garden is paying off. Getting Erith and Tricity ready for kindergarten and preschool is fun. The summer has been so busy, I'm excited to get a break once school starts!

Erith is 5 years old, she will turn 6 in December . She played T-Ball this summer and had a playdate with her best friend once a week. She LOVES to learn just like her Dad. She is excited to start kindergarten Aug 20th where Adam's aunt will be her teacher. She has been learning to read words one at a time when we have family scripture study. She's up to 30 and can sound out as many or more.

Tricity is 4 and very smiley. She went to a private preschool last school year twice a week and will get to go 3 times a week this year! She loves to play with her big sister Erith. They are inseparable and imaginative. Yesterday they were making people out of clay and using story books for their tents. (Propping them on their covers /\ I liked it!) She can read about 10 words.

Viola is 1 and walking (ahhh!) She is still a bit stiff legged but it's cute. She has a lot to say but we can't understand most of it. Her favorite word is Dad, yeah she's a Daddy's girl. She has a lot of personality coming through now that she's walking. She's quite the trouble maker. We can't leave anything on the floor or 3 foot from it.

I plan on updating this blog about once a week I will detail our trip we just took next probably. We will continue to add pictures to the photo gallery and I will e-mail when the updates are posted or extra good!

Where have I been the last month?  Well, I have been canning like crazy, and I've read all NINE Work and the Glory books.  It's amazing how into them I got.  I pretty much forgot that I had a blog, e-mail, a life...  Volleyball season is in full swing and so Adam goes to as many of those games as he can. 

Erith and Tricity have started piano lessons and they seem to be doing quite well. 

Adam has been building a new swingset/playtoy thing that we are pretty excited about.  I was just going to buy a kit and have him put it together, but he convinced me to let him design it himself.  It's about 2/3rds done now.  We've had the money to do it set aside since Spring but  he hasn't had time to do it till now.  If any of you haven't noticed, (haha) the economy is amazingly slow right now, so he has some time.

Erith and Tric had a nice stick fight a couple weeks ago and Tric got hit one inch from her eye with a big stick.  It was very ugly and Tric got tired of answering all the questions about it.  My mom gave us some magic bruise cream and it worked wonders on her black eye, thank goodness!

Vi is talking really well the last month.  She starts each day saying "Dora, Boots, Peese Mom" and ending each day the exact same way.  We have one Dora movie and I really think I could quote it from memory.

Clara is eating some baby cereal and other baby foods now, it seems to be helping her unquenchable hunger, yay!  She has turned into quite the Mommy's girl lately.  I'm flattered that she loves me so much, but wow, is it ever hard to get things done around here one handed.

We are doing quite well and we hope you all are doing well despite our economy.

I have been canning like crazy since school started.  So far this year I've canned: green beans, carrots, roast beef, cherry juice, apricot juice, apple juice, plum juice, apple butter, peaches, and strawberry-peach jam.  Here is a picture of the last of our garden's carrots.

On the right, you can see why you should thin your carrots.  They grew into some twisted funky looking blobs.  I have 2 rows of potatoes left in the garden and that's about it.  I didn't grow enough tomatoes or onions to do salsa, so I'll skip that this year. Gotta love harvest time!

Right before I got sick I had a Mormon Wonder Woman day, my friend had a whole wonder woman week recently and so it inspired me to document my one Wonder Woman Day.

I cut by hand 20 pints worth of beef roast chunks, and canned them.

I made rolls, cookies, and soup for a friend's family who was sick.

I babysat a four year old.

I set up and started tieing a quilt for a family whose house burned down.

I had a clean kitchen the whole day. (who cares what the rest of the house looked like, right?)

I "burried" a dead pet cat. (Vi came into the house cuddling a cat, and said "Mom, I have a cat, I think it's dead."  I told her to put it back where she found it and go wash her hands.  Where she found it was right where all the kids were playing outside, so I had to get rid of it pronto.)

Adam is pretty happy I'm finally using the quilt stands and frames he made for me two years ago for the first time.   I really got on his case to make them for me so I could tie this exact quilt, but alas, all the parts and pieces have sat in the basement family room for 2 years untouched till now.  Well, Wonder Woman Days don't happen every day!